Night Watch Read online

  Magda appeared from the darkness behind the man. She had discarded her shoes and was moving quietly. Whatever she is doing, I must keep him looking at me, Karl thought. He must not see her. ‘Who the hell do you think you are yelling at me like this?’ He used his best command voice, one that had cowed subordinates for years. ‘I’ve told you, you have the wrong man. I’ve never seen you before in my life. Go away. Go away! Are you an idiot?’ Karl took a step forward.

  Leon hesitated. The doctor was a big man, and he looked fit, and Leon was weak and broken. The idea that the man might get away made him want to weep. He fumbled with the knife, and finally managed to open it.

  Magda was close now. She could smell him: horse and sweat. She removed the pin that held her hat to her hair. The pin was four inches long and slightly flattened like a blade. It was topped by a large fake pearl that gave her a good grip. She examined the back of the man’s head. It had been a long time since she had studied anatomy, but she had a fine, retentive mind. She saw the spot she was looking for, above the dirty collar of the man’s jacket. She drove the pin hard up into the hollow at the base of the man’s skull. She twisted the steel and probed. The man stiffened. The steel blade in his brain locked his legs. He tried to turn but could not. ‘Hold him,’ she commanded.

  Karl grabbed the man’s wrists and squeezed.

  Magda pulled the pin out, and the man sagged a bit and whimpered. She stabbed the pin back in at a different angle. The man bleated and jerked, and the knife fell from his hand. ‘Hold him tight.’

  Karl hugged the man, pinning his arms. The man’s breath was thick with onions and decay. His eyes were wide and staring. His mouth stretched in agony, and his body shuddered and twitched as Magda twisted the steel in his brain. Karl noted the parchment of the man’s skin, the broken veins in his nose, the gray stubble on his cheeks. He looked past the man to Magda. Her brow was furrowed with concentration. She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth, the way she did when she was working out a knotty problem.

  Magda pulled the pin out and jabbed it in again. Leon Dudek bent backward like a bow, and his face strained toward the sky. He quivered as if electrified. The pin cut something fatal. His head slumped onto Karl’s shoulder and Karl let him down onto the pavement and crouched to feel his neck for a pulse. ‘He’s dead.’ He stood up. ‘Well done, darling.’ He kicked the body lightly. ‘What did you use?’

  ‘My hat pin.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have known where to go in with it. I’ve forgotten so much since medical school. You’re a wonder.’ He took her in his arms. She could feel their hearts racing together, and he felt the heat rise in both of them. ‘We better go.’

  ‘I have to find my shoes, and my hat fell when I took out the pin. You should take his wallet. They’ll think it’s a robbery.’ She stood on tiptoes to kiss him.

  In the glow from the streetlamp her eyes were bright, and to Karl she looked beautiful.

  TWO

  When Cassidy woke up, he was on his back on the living room floor, naked, confused, and in pain. The table near the big chair by the window was on its side, and its lamp lay shattered nearby. The dream had driven him here. He tried to remember it: a suffocating blackness like visible doom. Something was coming for him, something that wanted him dead. He ran down a dark corridor, and whatever it was followed him. It drew closer. There was a door at the end of the corridor. Reach the door, and he was safe. He yanked the door open. Ahead was another dark corridor, and the thing that wanted him waited at the end. He turned back, but the door was closed behind him, and it would not open, and the thing in the darkness was getting closer.

  He had had the same dream three times in the last month. The repetition troubled him, because ever since his childhood some of his dreams had turned out to be prophetic. He would dream of a man he had never seen before and would then meet that man a few days later. He would dream of a room he had never entered, and a week later would be in that room. Sometimes the dreams carried awful weight. When he was sixteen, he had dreamed of his mother’s suicide and had come home in the afternoon from a friend’s house to find her dead in her room exactly as he had dreamed it. Should he have known? Could he have saved her? He still carried that like ice in his heart.

  When he rubbed his leg, he felt the stickiness of blood. ‘Ah, shit,’ he groaned.

  The overhead light came on.

  ‘What the hell, Michael?’ Rhonda Raskin crossed the living room and knelt beside him. ‘Are you all right? Hey, you’re bleeding. What happened?’

  ‘Sleep walking. I guess I hit the table.’

  ‘Let me get something for your leg.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll get up.’

  ‘You’re going to drip blood on the rug. Let me get something.’

  ‘The rug’s had blood on it before.’

  She helped him to his feet and he limped to the kitchen. He sat on a stool next to the black walnut counter that separated the kitchen from the living room while she got a box of Band-Aids from the drawer next to the stove. She was a tall, slim woman about his age. She had a narrow, intelligent face made striking by huge, dark eyes. Her black hair was tousled from bed. She wore his bathrobe with the sleeves rolled high.

  She took a large patch from the box and handed it to him to strip off the paper. ‘We better wash that first,’ she said. ‘Do you have any alcohol?’

  ‘There’s a bottle of gin there.’

  ‘Good as anything, I guess.’ She sloshed gin on a paper towel and scrubbed the wound.

  ‘Ow! Easy.’

  ‘Baby.’ She threw the bloody paper away, took the Band-Aid, and pressed it down over the wound. ‘I think you’ll live.’ She went back into the kitchen and put coffee grounds and water in the percolator and set it on a burner. ‘So?’

  ‘Sleep walking. It happens.’ He did not talk about prophetic dreams to anyone. He had tried once with his younger sister, Leah, just after their mother died, but she had covered her ears and told him to stop, she did not want to hear it. She understood what a horror it was to dream about your mother’s death and to have the dream come true.

  ‘I know it happens,’ Rhonda said. ‘It happened the last time I was here too.’ She looked down at herself and pulled the robe tighter. ‘Jesus, what do I look like? Something the cat dragged in.’

  ‘The cat’s got great taste.’

  She looked at him skeptically. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Here, put this on.’ She took off the robe and handed it to him and went back toward the bedroom with the slightly knock-kneed walk of a naked woman who knows she’s being watched. Cassidy stood up and took the robe. He had a narrow waist and broad shoulders. He stood a bit under six feet tall and weighed a hundred seventy-five pounds. His back was scarred as if scourged by whips – shrapnel wounds from a German mortar during the war. He put on the robe, scrubbed his face with a hand to chase the last heaviness of sleep, and combed his unruly black hair back from his face with his fingers. He lit a cigarette from the pack of Luckies on the counter while he waited for the coffee to perk.

  Rhonda was a reporter for the New York Post. They had had a thing a few years back that started hot and flamed out badly. They lost touch. He heard she got married; heard it didn’t last. He ran into her at a rooftop party in Brooklyn in May on one of those impossibly perfect spring evenings. The full moon hung over the city. The air was light and soft and perfumed, a triumph of trees and flowers over gasoline, diesel, and smoke. An evening full of promise where everyone was smart and beautiful, and life would go on forever. Romance was inevitable.

  They started seeing each other again once or twice a week. They discovered that they still liked each other, liked the talk, and the laughter, and the sex. They began carefully this time, no promises, no expectations, a day at a time, a week. He did not think about whether it would grow or die. It was here now, and that was enough.

  She had a bitter, funny view of the world. Her explanation of the failed marriage – he wanted her to quit he
r job, stay home, and do what girls do. ‘He wanted a cleaner, whiter wash, and dinner on the table at seven, and I didn’t.’

  The day was just starting to brighten the windows that overlooked the Westside Highway past the roofs of the piers, to the dark flow of the river and the glint of gold where the rising sun touched the tops of the tallest buildings in Hoboken across the Hudson from Greenwich Village. Cassidy’s apartment was on the top floor of a five-story building. He had bought it with money his mother had left him. The big living room had exposed brick walls and tall windows. The kitchen was separated from the living room by the counter where he sat. A short hall led to a large bedroom and a bathroom. The furniture was simple and comfortable, and most of the paintings that decorated the walls were from Village artists, many of whom he knew. A mahogany-cased TV stood against one wall next to the cabinet that held his stereo and his collection of jazz records.

  When Rhonda came back, her hair was combed, her makeup was fresh, and she was dressed in a light-colored tweed suit that showed off her legs. She poured coffee for both of them and leaned on the counter and studied his face. ‘Are you all right? I mean really? This sleep walking thing is a little bit weird, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It happens. Then it stops.’

  She studied him, started to say something, and then stopped and shrugged. ‘Okay. But you know, Michael, there are people who talk to other people about the things that are bothering them.’

  ‘Don’t believe it. It’s just a rumor put out by the shrinks to drum up trade.’ Rhonda was not the first woman who complained that Cassidy hid his thoughts. What was he going to tell her: that he had woken up a week ago crouched in a corner of the living room, his service revolver in his hands, the hammer back, a trigger pull away from killing his easy chair? He had had no idea of how he had gotten there or what part of the dream he was going to kill, but it scared him.

  ‘Okay, baby.’ Rhonda patted him on the cheek. ‘What the hell? I’ve always had a weakness for the slightly bent, and you sure fill that slot. I’m going to work. Intrepid girl reporter hot on the trail of breaking news: are hemlines up this year, or down? What does the New York housewife think about the convenience of frozen TV dinners for the family? Catch the hard-hitting scoops in the Post.’ Like most women reporters, Rhonda was assigned soft stories that were meant to appeal to women, and she chafed under the restrictions. ‘Are you working anything juicy?’

  ‘A drug thing in Hell’s Kitchen, a couple of stick-ups around Times Square. A woman over on 8th and 51st shot her husband six times while he was watching television and then called us.’

  ‘Justifiable homicide.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Her husband? What else could it be?’ she said as she picked up her purse from the counter. ‘Will you call me if you get something?’

  ‘You know I will. When do I see you again?’

  ‘I’ve got a charity thing at the Metropolitan Museum tonight. Friday?’

  ‘I’ve got tickets to the fights.’

  ‘Call me. We’ll figure it out.’ She kissed him lightly so as not to smear her lipstick and walked to the door. She must have known he was watching, because she twitched her hips once before the door closed behind her, and Cassidy went into the day with a lighter heart.

  Cassidy stood on the platform in the 14th Street subway station in the crowd of commuters for the next train that would take them uptown to their daily grinds.

  He was unaware of the man who studied him from a few paces away.

  The man wore a duffel coat with a deep hood that obscured his face. He had picked up Cassidy on Hudson Street and had followed him to the 14th Street subway station for the third day in a row. He had followed Cassidy through the city a number of times and had made notes of where he went and whom he met. He was good at that kind of work, and he was sure that Cassidy had no idea that he had a shadow. He had been trained to take his time for an operation like this, but now he wanted to get it done. He had denied himself the pleasure of watching Cassidy die for long enough. Why not kill him today?

  The press behind Cassidy grew denser as more people arrived and pushed into the back of the crowd. He was hemmed in on both sides, and he could feel the bulk of a fat man just behind him. He turned his head and caught the man’s eye, and the man shrugged an apology for the intimacy. Cassidy’s toes touched the yellow warning grid a couple of feet from the drop-off edge of the platform. A distant iron whine, a vibration, a waft of stale metallic air pushed up the tunnel. The train would arrive in under a minute.

  The man who shadowed Cassidy pressed against the broad back of the fat man. The fat man inched forward to relieve the pressure. That pushed Cassidy a short step onto the yellow warning grid. Cassidy leaned back against the man’s bulk. The man said, ‘Sorry,’ and tried to edge backward, but the pressure against his back was implacable.

  The blast of air grew stronger. The steel wheels shrilled on the tracks and the couplings between cars rattled and banged as the train ran hard for the station. Cassidy could see the light on the lead car down the tunnel. Twenty seconds until it arrived.

  People around Cassidy shuffled forward a little in anticipation of the train. The pressure on Cassidy’s back pushed him toward the platform edge. Cassidy tried to dig his shoes into the warning grid, but he could get no grip. ‘Hey, give me some room. Back up. Back up.’ Jesus Christ, what was going on behind him? Didn’t they get it?

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. I can’t.’ There was panic in the fat man’s voice. ‘Back up,’ he yelled at whoever was behind him. ‘Please back up. Give us some room. You have to give us some room.’

  Cassidy’s shadow pressed harder into the fat man’s back, forcing him to take a small step forward. Cassidy felt himself pushed to the edge of the platform. He tried to move sideways but there was no place to go. He leaned back hard, but gained nothing. His heart hammered in his chest. The front car was closing fast. He pushed back as hard as he could. The fat man grunted, but he could not give way. Cassidy felt himself tip forward.

  THREE

  The pressure on Cassidy’s back went away, and he lurched back a foot. The train slammed into the station with a squeal of brakes and the crash of couplings. The train stopped. The doors opened. The surge of people behind him pushed Cassidy into the car.

  The man in the duffel coat watched the train grind into motion, pick up speed, and disappear into the tunnel. That was close. Cassidy alive one moment and then dead the next. There was no pleasure in that. Too fast. Cassidy would not even have known he was dying. He should know it was coming for a long time. He should know why. He should have to think about it. That’s where the terror lies: thinking about death, knowing it’s coming, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s what he wanted for Cassidy. Not some flick of the switch from light to dark. Where was the joy in that? He almost fucked the whole thing up out of impatience. Get a hold of yourself. Take your time. This was supposed to be fun. He went up the stairs and out into daylight.

  Cassidy carried two cups of coffee from the corner diner up the stairs to the squad room and put one down on his partner’s desk.

  ‘Thanks,’ Tony Orso said. ‘Hey, what’s with you? You look kind of weird.’

  ‘I’m never taking the fucking subway again. I almost got pushed under the train at 14th Street.’

  ‘You were standing in the front row?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You grew up here. You should know better. Don’t be standing in the front row at rush hour. If you do, you deserve what you get.’

  ‘Thanks. That was comforting.’

  Orso unfolded a piece of paper on his desk and smoothed it out with his thumb.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Cassidy took the lid off his coffee and took a sip. He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on his desk.

  Orso held up the paper to show a Regent 7 prefix, an Upper East Side phone number. ‘I was down at Winky’s for the game last night. There’s a broad at the tab
le. I’m thinking, what the hell, easy pickings. I’ve never known a broad could play poker worth a damn. Someone says her name’s Amy Something. I don’t catch the last name right then. Anyway, the usual crowd, Petey Blue, Al Costanza, Bill Parnell, Frankie What-the-Fuck owns that grind house on 41st, and a couple of others in and out of the game. But she’s there the whole time. After a few hands I think, holy shit, Tony, watch your ass. This one’s good. If they’re all like this one, I don’t want to see another. She can play. And she’s got no tells I can see. She’s having a good time, laughing, talking, giving guys the needle, having a drink. None of it means a thing. She picks up her hand, looks at it, gives you nothing. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes not, also doesn’t mean a thing. Same if she’s got a full house or a busted flush. Cool, very cool. A couple of hours in she’s cleaned three guys out, and I’m just holding my own, maybe a hundred up, not much of it her money. And I can play the game. You know I can play.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’ Cassidy’s tried the coffee again.

  ‘Right. So I’m watching her, trying to get a read, but it’s hard, man. Then right at the end, I’m holding a pair of nines, pair of threes. She’s raising and people are dropping out, and it’s her and me, heads up, and there’s I don’t know what, maybe a grand in the pot. I don’t know what she’s got, but the way she’s been playing all night it’s got to be stronger than mine, but goddamn it. Enough. So I call. She lays down a pair of deuces. She was bluffing. She builds the whole night to this bluff. I show her mine. She gives me a little smile, like she knew. A couple of minutes later I’m out in the bar having a couple of pops, she comes out and stands beside me. I ask her if she wants a drink. She says, no, then slides this paper over, says call me, and goes. She’s wearing trousers, and when she walks away, it’s something to watch. Like two puppies fighting in a sack.’